Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Tamara Hill
Beginning Reader

Materials:
-primary paper and pencil
-chart with "Charlie likes chewy chocolate chip cookies."
-class set of Elkonin boxes
-letters:  ch, o, p, r, i, m, u, l, n, s, t
-class set of books: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom  By: Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault (Simon, 1989)
-worksheets that have /ch/ pictures on them:  chimp, chips, cheetah, chop (action picture), chocolate, chair, lunch, house, chalk, crayons, chicken, and a television
-copies for each student with paragraph on it: "Chip sits in a chair with his pet chimp.  Chip likes to play with chalk with his chimp.  He has much fun!"

Procedures:  1. Introduce lesson: I know that we've been learning how one letter makes  one sound, but today we're going to see what happens when we put a certain  combination of letters together.  We're going to learn today that when we put c  and h together, they make the choo choo /ch/ sound.  Sometimes in our  alphabet weird things happen, like two letters making one sound.  This is called a  digraph, whenever two letters together make one sound.
2. Practice:  Have you ever been outside when a train passes and heard the sound that a train makes?  It goes /ch-ch-ch-ch/ /ch-ch-ch-ch/.  That's the sound that we're going learn to spot in words but also be able to read and spell words that have this digraph in them.  Now let's all pretend that we're a big choo choo train and make the sound /ch/ together.  /Ch-ch-ch-ch/·.
3. Tongue Twister Chart:  Now, I'm going to read a sentence, and I want you to listen for the /ch/ sound.  "Charlie likes chewy chocolate chip cookies."  I want you to pull your ear if you heard the /ch/ sound in that sentence.  I am going to reread the sentence very slowly, and this time when you hear the /ch/ sound, I want you to tug at your ear whenever you hear it.  (Read the sentence word by word, while pointing to the chart)  Now let's say that sentence together and separate the /ch/ sound from each word, like in /Ch/-arlie.  Class:  "Ch-arlie likes ch-ewy ch-ocolate ch-ip cookies."
4. Letterbox Lesson:  I want everyone to get out your letterboxes and fold them so that only three boxes are showing.  Pass out baggies with letters in them.  Everyone turn all your letters to the lowercase sides.  Model:  I'm going to say a few words and I want you to separate the words into the different sounds that make up the word.  If I say chat, I'm going to think /ch/ /aaa/ /t/, and place letters in appropriate boxes.  See how the c and h are taped together.  Why did I do that for you?  Right, because they make one sound, /ch/.  That means that they go in the same box because they represent one phoneme.  Have them untape the c and h midway.  Now it's your turn.  (Say words to them one at a time and walk around to assess students) 3-letter phoneme words:  chop, chip, rich, much, 4-letter phoneme words:  lunch, chest, chimp; then 5-letter phoneme word: crunch.  Ok, you have all done an awesome job on spelling these words.  Now I'm going to spell the words on the overhead for you and I want you to try and read them aloud to me.  If I place the word ch-o-p on the overhead, then I'm going sound out each separate phoneme, "/ch/ /o/ /p/, chop".  (Spell the same words one at a time on the overhead and give students a few seconds then have them read it together).  Here we go!
5. Reading with /ch/:  (Read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to them.)  As I'm reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to you, I want you to listen out for words that have the digraph ch, /ch/ in them.  At the end of the book, I want you to get out your primary paper and pencil and make of list of all the words that had /ch/ in them.
6. Have the children read a short decodable paragraph to you.  "Chip sits in a chair with his pet chimp.  Chip likes to play with chalk with his chimp.  He has much fun!"  Let them look over paragraph first and read it silently to themselves.  Then take a running record as they read it aloud to you.
7. For assessment, give each student a worksheet of different obvious pictures that have the digraph ch in them.  Below each picture, have them write the word that represents the picture.  The pictures include:  chimp, chips, cheetah, chop (action picture), chocolate, lunch, chair, house, chalk, crayons, chicken, and a television.  They're supposed to draw an X through the pictures that don't have /ch/ in them.  I'm going to walk around and observe their thinking, and have them one-on-one read the names of each picture that they tried to write down.

Reference:
 Eldredge, J. Lloyd. Teaching Decoding in Holistic Classrooms.  Prentice-Hall.  1995. pp. 50-70.

Murray, Bruce A. and Theresa Lesniak.  "The Letterbox Lesson:  A Hands-on Approach for Teaching Decoding."               The Reading Teacher.  Vol. 52, No. 6.  March, 1999.  pp. 664-650.

Allred, Katie.  Cha Cha Cha with /ch/.  http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/inroads/allredbr.html

Harbin, Rachael.  Chewy, Chewy Chocolate.  http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/inroads/harbinbr.html

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